In today’s roundup: Big news for prostate cancer, biofuels and biotech crops. Let’s take a look…

HEAL: USING ESTROGEN TO BATTLE PROSTATE CANCER – Biomedical researchers at the Monash University in Melbourne, Australian have identified a new way to treat prostate cancer using a drug compound to selectively activate the prostate’s beta estrogen receptor cells. Co-author of the study, Gail Risbridger, explained the innovation behind the use of hormones:

…this [process] has the effect of targeting for cell death a small but important population of cells in the prostate cancer tumor that are often resistant to conventional therapy and can lead to recurrent incurable disease…the studies provided proof of the controversial concept that estrogens — hormones mainly thought to be important for women — could be good for men and used therapeutically to treat prostate cancer.

FEED: EU APPROVES MONSANTO’S GM CORN – Reuters is reporting that The European Commission said has approved three genetically modified maize varieties made by American agricultural biotech firm Monsanto for food and feed uses and import and processing in the European Union

“The three GM maize types MON863xMON810, MON863xNK603, and MON863xMON810xNK603, received a positive opinion from EFSA (European Food Safety Authority) and underwent the full authorisation procedure set out in the EU legislation,” the Commission said in a statement.

FUEL: EFFICIENCY AND COOPERATION SPELLS THE FUTURE OF BIOFUEL - Yesterday, Biofuels Digest outlined the processes behind two innovative biofuel solutions that, when combined, may lead to the direct conversion of poplar trees into high-density biofuels such as jet fuel. The first, developed at the University of Wisconsin, involves the direct conversion of cellulose to jet fuel via an old fuel pathway (GVLs) that have now been made substantially more efficient.

To envision it, first think about biodiesel, and how that is produced from virgin or waste oils by a process called transesterification. It’s a process found in nature — and if you’ve ever had a ripe Gouda cheese, one of the flavoring components is a product called a lactone, ultimately formed from milk but specifically a transesterification of a hydroxy fatty acid. Lactones, like milk products, are many in number and wide in uses. They are divided by the number of carbon molecules — and generally speaking, the more carbon, the more dense a fuel made from them. A five-carbon lactone is valerolactone (now you know where Valero got its name), and one type of valerolactone is gamma-valerolactone (GVL) referring to the location of carbon in its molecular chain.

The second project, headed by researchers at the University of Maryland and Bowie State University and funded by a $3.2 million grant from the National Science Foundation’s Plant Genome Research Project, utilizes the recently completed poplar tree genome and focuses on ways to improve the poplar tree’s nitrogen processing capability, enhancing its growth rate and feasibility for use in fuel production:

“What we’re looking for is the most efficient way for these plants to process nitrogen,” explained Ganesh Sriram, assistant professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering at the UNiversity of Maryland. “It’s like dealing with traffic. Imagine you’ve got cars on a road, each can only hold one passenger, and that can’t be changed. If you want more people to get to a destination in a certain amount of time, you can increase the speed limits, add more traffic lanes, reroute the cars onto parallel roads, avoid delays, or change the timing of the traffic lights. That’s what we’re doing on a genetic and molecular level for poplar.”